


The Life that Chose You

by briony8969



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, Awkwardness, Comedy, F/M, Infidelity, Jemma Simmons Has No Chill, Leo Fitz Feels, Love Confessions, Pining, Romantic Angst, Slow Build, but not too slow, homewrecker Fitz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-02-17 08:46:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13073334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briony8969/pseuds/briony8969
Summary: Leo Fitz had basically resigned himself to a life of quiet misery and disappointment when he found out that his college best friend (and secret love of his life) Jemma Simmons had married handsome astronaut Will Daniels.But things get worse when the happy couple move to Houston, where Fitz lives, and Will gets a job at the Space Center where FITZ WORKS.Now Jemma is suddenly and seriously back in his life, and Fitz has to figure out how on earth he's going to handle this situation.Endgame Fitzsimmons.





	1. Nightmare, Totally

Parties that take place the night before university commencement usually usually have a sad kind of tension to them. All the kids pretend that everything is fine and normal, and that the carefree way they’ve been partying and hanging out all the time will just continue on forever. But it won’t. Because no matter how much you pretend that graduating and getting a job won’t change things, your group of friends will never be the same.

Fitz and Simmons, comfortably and sleepily drunk, leaned against one another on their friend’s futon at about 2:30 AM. They both planned to walk at commencement at 10AM. Not everyone at the party had gone home yet, two kids they didn’t know very well were making out on the love seat on the other side of the apartment, and the rest of their friends were deep in a poker game. Empty beer bottles were strewn haphazardly over every surface, and the crumbly remains of a funfetti cake took up most of the limited kitchen counter space. Someone had tried to make vodka Swedish fish, (Jemma had known that would be a failure but she let them try anyway so as not to rain on their parade) and the syrupy mess that had resulted sat on the coffee table, slowly liquifying. 

“When are your mum and dad getting here tomorrow?” Fitz sleepily asked, checking his watch.

“Oh God. 8AM I think.” Jemma said with a groan, snuggling a bit closer into her best friends arm. “We’re heading out right after the ceremony to catch our flight. It’s going to be a mess.”

“No time for lunch? Mum said she’d take us all out someplace.”

“Oh that sounds LOVELY but I could tell from mum’s texts tonight that she’s already cross with me tomorrow. She gets stressed about flying.”

Fitz understood. He’d stayed with Jemma’s family for the holidays last year and witnessed the vicelike motherly grip with which Mrs. Simmons held her family. There would be no time for Jemma to slip off and say goodbye to her mates. 

“You should come to Texas with me.” Fitz muttered, sleepily. “You don’t need another doctorate, you could be making 55 dollars an hour next week with the Department of Defense.”

“Oh hush, I’m not getting a second doctorate for the money. You know how important Dr. Weaver’s research is. This is a great opportunity!”

“Yeah but California’s so expensive.” Fitz complained. And far away from Houston, where he was going to be working as an AST Aerospace Flight Engineer.

“I’m going to miss you so much, Fitz.” Jemma sighed, putting her head on his shoulder. 

“Don’t be embarrassing.” Fitz laughed. “We’ll still be friends” 

Jemma weakly elbowed him as she started to pull herself up off of the futon.

“I’d better get home.” She said. “I told myself I’d get a good night’s sleep before commencement so I don’t look like a raccoon in all the photos, but that ship has definitely sailed.” 

“That was a nonstarter anyway, you were always gonna look like some kind of rodent.” Fitz teased, dodging her friendly punch as he stood up. “I’ll walk you home.”

“Don’t be an idiot, it’s only a few blocks.” Jemma protested.

“It’s three in the bloody morning, I’ll walk you home.” Fitz said. 

Jemma made a face at him but let him accompany her out the door. The night was warm and pleasant, and even though the streets were mostly dark there were still small groups of people meandering around, looking for someplace to buy waffles or burritos or whatever drunk food they fancied.

As the two of them walked, Jemma giggled to herself.

“You know, Fitz, it’s funny, I always thought we’d date.”

Fitz blinked a few times.

“What?!” 

“Don’t be daft, not like, anything weird, just, you know, I always thought at some point, before we graduated, we’d date or something.” Jemma clarified. 

Fitz stared at her like she had just suggested that they both drop out of uni and tour as a prog rock duo. 

“I’m glad we didn’t?!” Jemma said. “It would have been a nightmare.”

“That’s… absolutely…” Fitz was going to say ‘mad’ but for some reason couldn’t. “Nightmare, right, totally.” 

“Totally.” Jemma agreed. “But you know how it is, groups of friends, there’s just some people that it never quite works out with but you wonder, what might have happened if things were different?” 

“You’ve wondered that?” Fitz asked.

“Well, yes! But I’m glad it never happened, because you are my BEST friend Fitz. Things would have just got weird if we’d dated.” 

Jemma continued to walk on, happily drunk, unaware of the mental semi-truck that had just slammed into Fitz’s whole understanding of their relationship. He was still reeling when they reached Jemma’s door. 

“I really hope I see you tomorrow Fitz.” Jemma sighed, giving him a big drunk hug. “Thank you so much. See you later!” Jemma disappeared inside, giving Fitz a cheerful little wave as she shut the door behind her. 

Three times Fitz raised his fist up, inches away from the door, almost working the nerve up to actually knock. Every time second thoughts would make him flinch and retreat. Eventually, he shoved his hands in his pockets and fled back to his very small basement level apartment, where he drank another full beer by himself before passing out.

He would regret not knocking on that door for the next ten years.

~*~

Six years afer this incident, Alphonso “Mack” Mackenzie stepped into his apartment to find his grown-ass roommate lying face down on the floor, next to an open laptop.

“Uh, Turbo?” Mack asked, slowly shutting the door behind him. “You good, bro?” 

Fitz made a small gutteral noise in response. There weren’t any discernible words in it, but it was enough to signify that Fitz was not, in fact, good.

Mack scooped the computer off the floor, dodging Fitz’s efforts to grab it away from him.

“Who the hell’s Will Daniels?” Mack asked, reading the open browser page while holding Fitz’s computer out of his grasp like a game of keep away. “And why are you Facebook stalking him?” 

“Nooo…. He’s nobody, everything’s fine!!” Fitz tried to explain, reaching out to grab the laptop away from his much taller roommate. Mack dodged easily.

“Looks like he just got engaged?” Mack held the computer up above his head and stared Fitz right in the eye. “Fitz. You gotta talk to me.”

Fitz stopped struggling for his computer and, with a dejected sigh, collapsed heavily down onto their couch.

“He’s marrying Simmons.” Fitz said, utterly despondent.

“Your old college friend? The one in California?” Mack sat next to him and started scrolling through Daniels’s Facebook. It didn’t take long to find a picture of him next to a slim, pale, very pretty girl, absolutely glowing with joy as she displayed her engagement ring. Fitz had mentioned Simmons before, of course, but not in any sort of way that implied he was in love with her. The fact that Fitz was basically a boneless wreck lying on the floor seemed to imply otherwise. “Fitz… who is this girl?”

Fitz held his face in his hands.

“She’s absolutely the smartest and most beautiful person I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Hmm.” Mack had clicked on Simmons profile now. Logged in as Fitz he could see her whole feed. She posted a lot of cheerful emojis and chemistry puns, interspersed with pictures in scenic beaches and redwood forests with a handsome, dark haired man at her side. Her smile was bright and cheerful and her eyes were kind. “She’s cute, I’ll give you that.” Mack said.

“She’s perfect.” Fitz said, voice almost breaking.

“Ok buddy, you gotta snap out of this, she can’t be that… oh shit she works with Dr. Anne Weaver? That’s badass.”

“They’ve basically been curing cancer for the past 5 years.” Fitz said. “Last year she started dating this stupid… handsome test pilot, and now they’re getting married.”

Mack snapped the computer shut decisively.

“Why have you never mentioned this before?” He asked. “It sounds like she did a number on you.”

“She didn’t do anything to me… I mean… we never dated, we were just friends.”

“So she’s not even an ex? Really?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s the love of my life.” Fitz said, staring blankly forward at nothing, face drained of expression.

“Ok let’s reign this in here.” Mack went over to the fridge, contemplated grabbing a beer or a pint of ice cream, came back with both. He gently led Fitz over to the kitchen table, putting the ice cream and spoon in his hands and leaving the beer within reach. Fitz sat, miserably scooping chocolate caramel ice cream into his face.

Mack gave Fitz a stern look.

“Fitz, as I see it, you have two options. One, is, you cut yourself off from this girl. You unfriend her on social media, you stop calling her on holidays, and you let her get on with her ife with this test pilot. If this is just some old crush that’s getting you down, that’s what I recommend.”

Fitz didn’t respond, he just nodded slowly and continued to eat his ice cream.

Mack went on.

“Your second option is to fly to fucking California right now and do the damn thing. Make the romantic gesture. Once she’s married, that’s it. You’re done. You’ve got a little window right now where if this is worth it, if this is the real thing, you gotta tell her how you feel. She might hate you and turn you down, but you’ve got to try.”

Fitz looked up, ignoring the ice cream.

“I… I can’t. Jemma’s so happy with him. I’d just be a selfish prick.”

Mack shrugged. 

“I don’t know the situation, Fitz, I can’t guide you. I can tell you, as a formerly married man, that if this is real, then it’s worth it. But also, as a formerly married man, once that ring is on, it’s a whole different ball game.” 

Mack had moved in with Fitz three years back after his wife had thrown him out of their house. Fitz, who made good enough money to afford an apartment without a roommate, had been happy for the company. For two grown men sharing an apartment, they lived together well, each reading the other well enough to know when to back off or step up when necessary.

Fitz groaned and lay his forehead down on the dining table, ice cream completely abandoned.

“Wow.” Mack said, taking in the pathetic scene. He went to get a beer for himself. “You have got it BAD, huh?” 

Fitz made some more unintelligible noises.

~*~

1 year later.

It was almost 2am. Jemma’s mum and dad were in the guest room, Will’s huge extended family was sleeping on every spare piece of furniture in the house, and three of his little cousins were literally in sleeping bags on the floor of the living room. Jemma, nothing if not an excellent planner, had called and double checked every vendor, got the whole church and reception venue decorated on time, had her dress fitted and hung safely in the hall closet, and should have had nothing on her mind other than excitement. Still, she tossed and turned and eventually gave up even trying to sleep. Tip toeing over the slumbering bodies littering her apartment, Jemma slipped outside onto the landing. 

She called Fitz.

“Simmons?” A very sleepy and even more difficult to understand than usual Scottish accent answered the phone.

“Fitz!! I’m so glad you picked up!”

“It’s almost four, Simmons, what the hell?” 

“Right, sorry, time difference. This will just take a minute, It was just bothering me… I should have invited you to the wedding.”

“What?” 

“I mean, our venue is small, so we had to limit it to 50 guests and that ended up just being family, but you’re family, and I just feel awful that I didn’t invite you.”

“It’s fine, Simmons… Jemma. It’s all right.” 

“It’s not, though.” Jemma insisted. “I just got all wound up in the planning and I kept thinking, oh Fitz won’t mind, but then today I had to suffer through lunch with my uncle Benjamin, talking about how too many brown people have moved into his housing unit, and I just thought… why did he make the cut and not lovely Fitz?”

“Well, Jesus, fuck Uncle Benjamin.” Fitz laughed.

“He’s just horrible! And I hope you aren’t upset with me. I ought to have made you a bridesmaid or something.”

“Ok, first of all, thank you for not making me a bridesmaid. That… that would not have been great. And I’m not cross with you. I’m very happy for you.”

“I wish you’d met Will, I really think you two would get on.”

“He seems really, really good for you.” Fitz said, softly. There was a long pause. “What is this, do you want my blessing or something?” He sort of teased.

“Oh shut up! And thank you. You absolutely MUST come visit soon.”

“Well, you know how it is here, every project is always the end of the world.” Fitz said. 

“Then I’ll visit you.”

“When you’ve got what, your eighth doctorate?” Fitz teased.

“Oh go to bed!”

“Congratulations, Jem.” 

“Thanks, Fitz.” Jemma hung up the phone, feeling sort of light and fluttery and like a weight had been pulled from her chest. 

Fitz, lying in his bedroom, sighed deeply. He grabbed his phone off the nightstand next to the bed, opened his Facebook app and deleted it entirely. He muted Jemma on every other social media account. He exhaled shakily, closed his eyes, and lied back on his pillow. It was done. He had to move on.


	2. Shrimp! Heaven! Now!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in publishing! The holidays happened and I got a bit behind. I hope you enjoy chapter 2!

Three years later.

Mack stared grimly at a helicopter engine in the DOD hangar, trying to figure out what the hell kept causing an ominous rattling noise every time they turned it on. As he tried to listen for the source of the problem, he heard somebody behind him hiss to get his attention. He turned to see Fitz waving to him like a crazy person from across the shop. Mack pretended to ignore it, but that only made Fitz hiss again and wave like an even crazier person. Mack sighed and wiped some oil off his hands, making his way over to his friend.

“Seriously, Turbo?” Mack muttered. “Why aren’t you in the lab? It’s like a 15 minute walk over here. You’re gonna get fired.” 

“Have you checked your email today?” Fitz asked, fumbling to pull his phone out of his pocket with shaking hands.

“Nah, I haven’t had a chance.”

“Look.” Fitz held up his phone. It was open to one of HR’s form emails in which they announced new hires. 

“So what?” Mack asked.

“Look at the new astronaut class.”

Mack did. It looked like the usual bunch of cocky young guys and gals who had actually made the whole “childhood dream of being an astronaut” thing happen. 

“Help me out, man.” Mack requested.

“IT’S WILL.” Fitz kind of squeaked, staring down at his phone like it had wronged him. “It’s Will Daniels. Handsome test pilot Will Daniels. Mr. Jemma Simmons. He’s been hired as an astronaut.” He mumbled his list with a low intensity bordering on mania.

With that a little gear clicked into place in Mack’s memory and the picture in front of him suddenly had meaning attached to it. 

“Oh shit!” He said.

“He starts next month. He starts HERE next month. Here. Where I work.” Fitz said.

“So hold up, Is she moving here?”

“Unless he’s abandoning his wife in California it looks like they’re both moving here, yes.” Fitz said, arms crossed, beginning to pace back and forth in the hallway.

Mack shook his head with a little disbelieving laugh. 

“You were doing so well! I thought you were all good! You’re still this messed up about this girl?” He asked.

Fitz gave Mack an exhausted expression.

“You’re right.” He said, with sarcasm. “It’s fine. It’s just that I’ll be working with the man married to the most perfect human being in existence, but it’s no big deal.”

“You’ve gotta snap out of this, Fitz. There are other, great, smart, beautiful, SINGLE women all over the place.”

“Yeah? Like Elena?” Fitz snapped, then immediately regretted it. Mack clammed up. Elena Rodriguez was one of the security guards on base. She and Mack had built up a pretty impressive flirtatious repertoire but neither of them could get up the nerve to ask the other out. It was, frankly, embarrassing. 

“Everything’s gonna be fine.” Mack eventually said, ignoring Fitz’s little barb. “How often do you see the pilots? Almost never. As long as we avoid them at the staff Christmas party everything can just keep going like it has been.”

Fitz took a deep breath and tried to make himself agree. Mack was right, he spent 90% of his time locked in the lab. He saw the astronauts on television more than he saw them in real life. This couldn’t be as big of a deal as it felt like it was.

~*~

Will sought Fitz out almost exactly a month later, on his very first day on base.

One of the lab techs noticed him first. Fitz had been monitoring a simulation when Anu tapped his shoulder.

“Hey, there’s a guy looking for you?” She asked. It was rare for anybody outside their lab to venture into it, and none of them had ever actually seen one of the astronauts in the flesh before. She wasn’t sure about the correct protocol.

Fitz had been pretty wrapped up in some calculations, and as he struggled to focus back in on the real world he almost yelped at the sight of Will Daniels. In person he was even more impressive than he was in pixels. He was tall and muscular without looking like a meathead, and he smiled a bright, welcoming smile as soon as he laid eyes on Fitz.

“Hey! Dr. Leopold Fitz, right?” Will asked.

“Erm… yes?” Fitz admitted weakly, trying to pretend he knew nothing about Will and hadn’t, you know, run like 5 online background checks on him at various low points in his life. Will smiled and confidently extended his hand to shake.

“Yeah sorry to bother you out of the blue, I know this is kinda weird, but my wife would absolutely drag me over the coals if I didn’t try to find you today. You’re actually old friends with her… Jemma Simmons?”

“Oh…” Fitz said, shaking the offered hand weakly.

“Hold up, Jemma Simmons?” Daisy Johnson, a drinking buddy of Fitz’s and the Lead Information Technology Specialist at the Space Center perked up over the top of a computer with a wide grin. “Like, every story Fitz tells from college has Simmons in it.”

“Simmons was a friend of mine!” Fitz said quickly, trying to head off any jokes Daisy might be about to make. “Good friends. Good old, college, chums.” He said, sticking his hands in his pockets and sitting heavily down into his office chair.

“She talks about you all the time too.” Will said with a laugh. “We have like, Fitz catchphrases in our house.” 

“Catchphrases?” Fitz asked, voice breaking slightly.

“Wait wait let me guess… is it…” Daisy scrunched up her face like she did when she was going to do one of her horrible Scottish accents, “What… the HELL!??!?” She exclaimed, in a pretty good Fitz impression actually.

Will laughed. “Not exactly, but now I know why Jemma says that so weird all the time!”

“I don’t… I mean…” Fitz blushed a bit, desperate to make this conversation stop but not able to find the words.

“She always tells this story…” Will changed tacks, “about a time she was preparing a sample in a haz-mat suit and then sneezed all over it?”

Fitz, despite himself, cracked a smile. 

“Oh yeah, that was brilliant!” He said with a snort. “She was all like…” He tried to explain what had happened but the thought of Jemma sneezing all over the sample was just too funny. He couldn’t even get a word out. Daisy and Will stood there patiently as Fitz struggled to get a word out over his laughter.

“Yeah, that’s how she gets when she tells it too.” Will said, shaking his head. “I never understood it.”

“Did you say you were Jemma’s husband?” Daisy asked. “So she’s in town?” 

Will nodded, and Daisy grinned at Fitz. “That’s great news! Are you excited to reunite?”

Fitz let out a kind of nervous whimper but he nodded.

“Jemma actually asked me to invite you over for dinner.” Will said to Fitz. “But we don’t have any of our stuff moved into our house yet, so I’m gonna switch that to out for drinks.” He paused again, brow furrowing. “Although I just got here yesterday so I don’t know any bars other than the ones at the airport…”

“We should go to Brazos.” Fitz said, amazed at the words coming out of his mouth. “I’ll bring my friend Mack.”

Daisy looked at him expectantly from over Will’s shoulder.

“Can, uh, can Daisy come too? She’s a friend…”

“Sure! That’s great, we don’t know ANYBODY in Houston.” Will smiled in a friendly way. “Jemma’s gonna be so psyched.”

“Yeah.” Fitz said, swallowing nervously. “Great.” 

~*~

Later that evening, Mack and Fitz sat together at a booth at Brazos. Usually they sat at the bar with Daisy when they got the opportunity, but this was a decidedly different kind of gathering. Brazos was a cute little taco restaurant and bar run by a young hipstery couple, and somehow it had become the hangout place of choice for Fitz, Mack, and Daisy. They had never accidentally run into a coworker there, and the tequila was cheap and high quality.

Mack had put on one of his nicer pull-over sweaters, and Fitz was sweating through a blue button up shirt. Intermittently he would pull at his collar and dab away some sweat on his forehead.

“Are you ok?” Mack asked.  
“It’s cool I’ve just ascended into another plane of existence it’s fine.” Fitz said.

“What’s fine?” Daisy Johnson asked, sliding into the booth opposite them. She looked cute, dressed in her usual black t-shirt and jeans combo that seemed to be her uniform outside of work.

“Everything. Everything is fine, Daisy.” Mack said. “How did you insinuate yourself into this mess?”

“Why’s it a mess?” Daisy asked, dipping a tortilla chip in the complimentary green salsa and glancing curiously back and forth between her two friends.

At that point, Jemma Simmons entered the bar, and Fitz lost track of the conversation. 

Jemma looked very much like Fitz remembered her, maybe a few more laugh lines around the eyes, still just radiating loveliness. Her hair was shorter and curlier than he remembered it, and she was wearing a very cute gray dress with pockets. She looked sort of uncomfortable as she scanned the restaurant for her friend, but when she saw Fitz in the booth she shrieked with delight.

“Fitz!” She shouted.

Fitz, despite himself, lit up. “Simmons!” He said, smiling broadly.

Will had entered the bar right after his wife, and smiled as Fitz and Simmons jumped into eachother’s arms in a big bear hug. Daisy clapped her hands at the reunion, while Mack eyed the situation cautiously.

“Isn’t it, uh, Daniels now? Jemma Daniels?” Mack asked, as the two of them hugged.

“Nope she kept her maiden name.” Will explained. “She told my mom it’s because her name has been published in too many articles already but its really because she’s a big old feminist.” Will waved politely at Daisy and Mack. 

Jemma pulled away from the hug first.

“Fitz!” She repeated, in a more angry tone this time. She punched him lightly in the arm, just hard enough that he pulled it back in surprise. “Why the hell did you not send me your phone number?” She asked.

“What?” Fitz asked, confused. “I never deleted your number!” 

It was true, in his social media purge Fitz had kept Simmons’s number in his phone, just in case of emergencies. He never called it, and he tended to scroll quickly past the S section of his contacts to avoid an overwhelming crush of regret, but it was there.

“My phone fell in the ocean on my honeymoon!” Jemma scolded. “I tried everything to find you but you got rid of all your social media! I coudn’t find your number anywhere!” 

“Oh…” Fitz had sort of imagined that in her state of married bliss she had forgotten all about him. 

“I thought you hated me!” Jemma said. “I was actually worried when Will found you you were going to spit in his face or something.”

“Of course not… I didn’t… I didn’t even realize you were going to be moving here.” Fitz lied. 

After everyone was introduced the five of them all squeezed into the booth together, like a big awkward family. Jemma sat across from Fitz, next to Daisy, and Will squeezed in at the end of the booth and put a possessive arm around his wife’s shoulders. Fitz struggled to keep his expression neutral as they all started to catch up. 

They learned that Will had trained to be a test pilot in the air force and got his masters degree in engineering in southern California. He had met Jemma on tinder in San Francisco while on a family trip when they had both pulled the app out on their phones on a whim. They learned that Will came from a large military family and was thrilled to work for the department of defense.

“I never saw… what about your project with Dr. Weaver?” Fitz asked Jemma. He’d been wondering about that project, Jemma had always seemed so wholly dedicated to it, it seemed strange for her to abandon it to come to Houston.

An odd shift came over Jemma’s body language at Fitz’s question. She kind of folded in on herself and diminished, like she was removing herself from the group. Will took his arm off of her shoulders as she subtly shrank away from him.

“It’s fine, she’s still working on it. We’re… she’s quite close to something, I think.” She said softly, twirling the straw in her frozen margarita.

“We stuck it out in California as long as we could.” Will said, and from the authoritative and yet dismissive way that he spoke it was clear that Fitz had opened up a subject that had not yet been comfortably resolved between them.

Almost subconsciously Fitz glanced up at Jemma with their “We’ll talk later” face, but she didn’t meet his eye. With a cold rush of reality he remembered that things weren’t going to be like they were. Sure, things felt very much like they had in college, but she wasn’t just his best friend anymore. Will was the partner of her life. Fitz took an overlarge bite of his sweet potato and black bean taco and nearly choked on it.

“So what’ll you be flying here then?” Mack asked, and turned the conversation to the kind of techy, mechanical stuff that straight men feel comfortable chatting about. Fitz, who knew as much about planes as Mack and much more than Will, stayed quiet for the most part, sipping his Modelo thoughtfully and glancing up at Jemma from time to time.

At the end of the night Jemma gave Fitz another long hug. Fitz hugged her back earnestly.

“Hold on!” Jemma exclaimed, painfully loudly right into Fitz’s ear. She scrambled to pull her phone out.

“Give me your number.” She demanded, phone at the ready.

Fitz obeyed. After entering it, Jemma typed a quick text and waited to hear Fitz’s phone buzz before grinning, giving Fitz one last quick kiss on the cheek, and exiting the taco joint.

Fitz stood where she left him, still holding his phone and longingly staring at the closed door in front of him. 

“What’s up with Fitz?” Daisy whispered to Mack, both of whom were still in the booth.

Mack sighed deeply and went over to his roommate, patting his shoulder just hard enough to snap Fitz out of it.

“You are treading in some real dangerous waters right now, Turbo.” Mack said.

Fitz stared down at his phone. His text from Jemma was a series of happy faces, followed by a random shrimp emoji that he could only imagine had been selected by accident. 

“God, she is fucking perfect.” Fitz said.

“Yup, and she is fucking married.” Mack sort of steered Fitz back to the booth, where Daisy was putting things together. She leaned forward with a conspiratorial wink.

“So you and Jemma huh? Back in college?” Daisy teased. “Wink wink nudge nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean?” She raised her eyebrows like a gross middle aged dude trying to be funny.

“I do know what you mean, and no, we didn’t, ever.” Fitz said, sinking down into his seat, staring at the sad remnants of his beer with dead eyes. 

Daisy was going to tease him some more, but the absolutely miserable way that Fitz seemed to deflate in Jemma’s absence made her reconsider.

“Poor Fitz!!” She said, with real empathy.

“Poor Fitz.” Fitz repeated, tapping the side of his phone. Jemma’s contact info glowed hopefully at him.

~*~

Jemma couldn’t stop smiling in the car ride home, particularly after Fitz responded to her text message with another shrimp and thumbs up emoji. 

“What a prat!” She giggled, typing and then erasing a few responses.

“I’m glad you’re happy.” Will said, glancing at his wife. When they stopped at a red light he put his hand on her leg. She looked up, as though remembering he was there, and gave him a quick kiss while they waited for the light to change.

It was good to see a smile on Jemma’s face again. Will had been afraid he had really blown it when he told her that he had accepted a job in Houston. She’d been supportive right up until he said they would have to move at the end of the month. 

He hadn’t meant to come down like such a hammer with the news, it was just that the job fit so well into every life plan he had ever made, and Jemma was in a weird pause point in her work with Dr. Weaver, and the timing to him just seemed perfect. Quite obviously, it had not seemed that way to Jemma, who alternated between screaming at him, giving him the cold shoulder, and crying wracking sobs for a full two weeks.

But Jemma eventually came around. When she found out that Fitz worked where they were moving she had been so excited she’d called him at work. It had been the first actual words she had said to him since the fight, and he had taken it as a kind of olive branch. Will mentally thanked Fitz for saving his marriage, as Jemma laughed at another one of his texts. The couple pulled up the poorly lit driveway to their still unfurnished home, and Will couldn’t help but feel optimistic about the future.


	3. Gossip and Mimosas

Every year the local Houston tv news aired a story about the new class of astronauts at the space center. The U.S. government encouraged this, as they attempted in vain to recreate the cold war era’s public obsession with space. For a family angle the station invited Jemma, along with the other significant others, to interview on base. Morning news aired at six, so Jemma found herself standing on a jet tarmac at sunrise, squinting into the incredibly bright lights of the news cameras.

“Pardon?” She asked for the eighth time. “I’m sorry I couldn’t hear the question.” 

In her defense there was a lot of engine noise in the background. Her interviewer exchanged a long-suffering glance with the cameraman.

“So are you proud of your husband?” Popular reporter Stacey Duenez brushed some stiff, heavily styled hair out of her face and raised her voice to almost a shout to ask the question, thrusting her microphone in Jemma’s direction.

“Well… Sort of. I’m not his mum.” Jemma responded, glancing nervously back and forth from the camera to Duenez. She had never been interviewed for TV before and her anxiety was way up.

“I mean, do you brag about him to your friends?” Her interviewer tried again with a wide, unnaturally white smile. “Not everybody’s married to an astronaut!”

“I have two doctorates!” Jemma shouted to be heard. She meant it in a fun way, like, ‘I could be an astronaut if I wanted to as well!’, but it came across as SUPER arrogant. 

“Ok. Um, what, uh, attracted you to Will?” 

“He’s very symetrical!” Jemma shouted to be heard over yet another jet engine roaring up in the background. 

Fitz, observing from near the door of the garage, cringed in empathetic embarrasment. 

“Your girl is blowing it pretty bad out there.” Mack said, taking a bite of a breakfast sandwich he’d bought on the way to work. It was about 4:30am. A late start for the flight team, actually, because of the news report. 

“Not my girl.” Fitz reminded him. “But, erm, yeah.” 

“Symmetrical?” Mack asked.

“Simmons has very… biological notions of what makes a person attractive.” Fitz explained. He’d noticed that about Jemma back in their college days. He’d actually given himself a good once-over in the mirror one time and obsessed over all of his asymmetrical features. He almost had a complex about it.

Jemma at that point was finally dismissed by her interviewer, who shifted her attention to the lesbian partner of one of the fresh out of grad school astronauts. She seemed much more delightful and outgoing. Jemma stole over to Fitz immediately and winced at him.

“Was I bad? That felt pretty bad.”

“They won’t use it, don’t worry.” Fitz said, with refreshing honesty. “They only ever put about two seconds of the spouses/partners on tv and they usually just show one of them crying in pride.”

“God that was weird. I felt like they expected me to be like, Tom Hanks’s wife in the Apollo 13 movie.” 

“Wait, you aren’t?” Mack laughed. Jemma sighed in exasperation. 

Outside, some of the astronauts had started horsing around and elbowing eachother, and the camera people were fighting to get a good shot of it. 

“This is absurd.” Jemma said. “Do they ever interview you?” She asked Mack.

“The mechanic? Are you kidding? Not glamorous enough.”

“But they must interview you, Fitz?” She turned to her friend. “With all the fascinating work you do!”

“Not really. I’d say my work is too top secret or something but it’s really just that nobody gives a damn about engineering.” Fitz said with a shrug.

“People are ridiculous.” Jemma muttered, watching Duenez laugh charmingly at one of the astronauts putting another in a headlock. “Ooh!” Jemma’s expression brightened. “Fitz! I haven’t seen your lab yet! May I? They won’t notice I’m gone.”

Mack, from behind Jemma, tried to catch Fitz’s eye and give him a warning look. Fitz wilfully ignored it.

“Sure! I’d uh, I’d love to hear what you think!” Fitz said with a smile. He retreated from the roughhousing astronauts and dull roar of the tarmac and used his badge to unlock the doors back into their facility. He ushered both Mack and Jemma inside, avoiding eye contact with his roommate.

Mack had to break away from the couple at a branch in the hallways so he could get back to his workplace. Fitz and Jemma almost didn’t notice, chatting away as they walked down the hallways like an old married couple. Mack glanced over his shoulder at the two of them, with a little bit of worry, as they disappeared together around the corner.

When Jemma and Fitz made it to the lab the room was only visible from the bluish glow of the computer standby lights.

“Oh, nobody’s here yet are they?” Jemma looked over at Fitz with an expression of guilt. “You must have come in early just because I said I’d be here?” She asked. 

Fitz flipped the light switches and the fluorescents slowly buzzed on. 

“Oh my God Fitz, why didn’t you tell me? You didn’t have to come to my stupid press event!” 

“You said you were coming to the center!” Fitz admitted. “I erm, wanted to show you around.” He gestured to the newly illuminated lab, and Jemma’s attention was drawn to the projects on display. Half finished machinery, delicate camera mechanisms, all sorts of things were strewn around in various phases of development. Jemma, eyes wide as she took it all in, let out a low whistle.

“What an amazing space!!” She whispered.

Fitz couldn’t help but puff up with pride a bit. The two of them had met in a lab. Well, they’d met in class, but it wasn’t until they worked together in a lab that they started to actually speak to one another. Together they’d discovered three key flaws in their chemistry professor’s multi-year grant funded research program and ended up with their names listed second and third on the journal publication. 

“I’m working on streamlining the data processing systems for the shuttle right now. I’m really close to…” Fitz took Jemma over to where he had been working for the past few weeks, and in about 30 seconds she asked a few follow up questions that completely shifted his perspective of the project and gave him a hundred new ideas for how to improve it. He couldn’t help but stare at her in awe. What a mind this woman had.

“God I miss this.” Jemma sighed, looking around the lab again.

“What?” Fitz asked. 

“Just… SCIENCE.” Jemma shrugged. “I’m going mad just sitting at home all day. I’ve started watching HGTV, it’s hell on earth.”

“You aren’t working?” Fitz asked, leaning against the table opposite her, stunned. He honestly couldn’t imagine an idle Jemma Simmons.

“I’m applying for things but it seems that anywhere I want to work isn’t hiring and anywhere that is hiring only has jobs I’m overqualified for.”

“I hope you don’t mind…” Fitz asked, nervously drumming the table with his fingertips. “but, what the hell happened with Dr. Weaver?”

Jemma’s face fell.

“We lost the grant. Our private donor died and his stupid nephew that took over his pharmaceutical company is basically Draco Malfoy but with less redeeming qualities. And without our matching private grant we lost our federal grant, and with only the University funding Weaver couldn’t afford me.” 

“That’s bloody mental.” Fitz said, shaking his head. “You were doing some great work!”

“Curing diseases doesn’t make money, Fitz, haven’t you heard?” Jemma sighed and shut her eyes. “And then… then Will got this offer and we left California and I’m not quite sure what’s next for me.”

“I could get you a job here, no problem.” Fitz said. 

“Designing data systems?” Jemma said, giving him a little smile. “I’m a biochemist Fitz.”

“We need biochemists for the astronauts! Keeping them healthy, measuring the impact of extended periods of time in space on the human body…” Fitz was about to go on but he saw Jemma’s chin start to tremble and he realized that she was about to cry. “Or… not, whatever… are you all right?” 

“I’m fine.” Jemma said. “I’m just… it’s early and I’m tired and I think I’ll just go home and watch the property brothers or something.” 

“Hey.” Fitz, without thinking, took Jemma’s hand. “You’ll find something.” He said, squeezing her hand gently. 

Until that moment Jemma had forgotten, but Fitz had used to hold her hand like that quite a bit in college. She remembered one evening in the lab, when she had accidentally contaminated three months worth of work, how she had stood there sobbing quietly in a panic until Fitz had appeared and distracted her until she was able to think logically again. She remembered absolutely losing her mind in the physics library trying to balance some chemical equations until Fitz’s comforting presence would calm her down and somehow remind her how the bonds made sense. She squeezed Fitz’s hand back in appreciation.

He snatched it back.

“S-sorry.” He said, stepping away from her and sort of shaking his hand like he was trying to get the cooties off. 

“No, no it’s fine.” Jemma said, flushing a bit, then getting embarrassed that she was flushing and thus flushing further.

“Um, Dr. Fitz?” Anu, the same lab tech who had introduced Will, was standing in the doorway with a large 7-11 coffee and a confused expression.

“Yeah! Anu! You all right? Good morning! Erm, this is… Jemma, er… Simmons, we’re just leaving. I mean, I’ll be back in a minute. Yep. Great. Bye.”

Fitz basically pushed Jemma out of the lab in his rush to get her out of there. She kept glancing back over at him to try to figure out what had happened to make him this skittish but he wouldn’t look her in the eye. 

“I’m glad you got to see the, lab, Simmons.” Fitz said quickly, when they reached the exit of the space center. “If you ever want to stop by, just let me know so I can get you security clearance.” 

“Oh, I’m sure I’d only be in the way.” Jemma said, fighting an urge to apologize. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to apologize, they’d been so normal and comfortable together a minute ago.

“Of course not!” Fitz looked almost hurt that she would suggest that.

“Fitz, I…” She looked at her friend’s face and for a moment felt a kind of overwhelming sense of protectiveness. “Thanks.” She managed to say. “I’ll see you later, uh, yeah?” 

Fitz flushed and waved, and Jemma stepped out of the exit and began walking towards the parking lot, too distracted to realize she was going the absolutely wrong way. She just kept thinking about how nice it had been to hold Fitz’s hand again.

“Oh God.” She whispered. “Oh no.”

~*~

Jemma had always viewed female friendships from an envious distance. She liked women, she got along well with women, but when one of her acquaintances was going to set up a Lularoe party she was not the person that they would call. She was too weird. She was also aware that there was a level of emotional literacy and empathy expected in female friendships that she utterly failed to meet. 

Now, thousands of miles away from her California friends and unable to call her mum (her mum, in various subtle British ways, had warned her against marrying Will Daniels frequently enough that her advice was utterly ruled out in this case) Jemma needed someone to turn to.

She didn’t know much about Daisy Johnson. Daisy had spent most of the first and only evening that they hung out together laughing infectiously and eating an impressive number of tacos. She had struck Jemma as a “cool girl,” the kind of girl who used to make a lot of fun of Jemma during her primary school years and who she normally treated with suspicion. However, Daisy had also befriended Fitz, and that meant that her tolerance for bizarre, socially dubious behavior was above-average to high. 

While her husband spent yet another late evening out bonding with the rest of his class of astronauts, Jemma did what she did best. She planned.

She ruled a wine and paint evening out on the basis that she hated the entire concept of such an activity. What, a group of women sit around and work on recreating the exact same painting while drinking an inhibitor that made it harder to perform even this simple task? Nonsense. Rubbish. 

Shopping, another socially acceptable female outing, was ruled out for two reasons. One, Jemma didn’t know if Daisy made the kind of money that made shopping a frivolous expense, and two, big box stores did not provide the kind of atmosphere she needed to get a good conversation going, the kind of conversation which would allow her to ask for some rather sensitive advice. 

The answer, in hindsight, was obvious.

“Brunch? Hell yeah I’ll go to brunch!” Daisy said, surprised at the out of the blue phone call invite from Jemma Simmons. 

“Oh lovely!” Jemma said, trying to sound calm and not like she had just given herself a celebratory fist pump. 

“You got any ideas where?” Daisy asked. 

“Not really…” This was a lie. Jemma was currently staring at multiple windows open on her laptop where she had ranked brunch spots based on price range, hours of availability, and location. They settled for a French place downtown that served what looked like a pretty killer Croque Madame.

Jemma spent less time (but still, some time) planning her outfit for the brunch. She wanted to look cute and normal but not intimidating or like she was trying too hard. She ended up wearing a cute white buttoned up blouse with what looked like a polka dot pattern from a distance but up close was actually a print of little whales. Paired with an a-line skirt and flats, she almost looked like an ex sorority girl reuniting with a former sister. 

She arrived at the restaurant fifteen minutes early and had a mimosa in preparation, running through conversation topics in her mind. Daisy showed up right on time wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and hair that looked pretty slept on.

“Damn girl, does that blouse have whales on it?” Daisy asked, lowering her sunglasses, impressed. “Cute shit.”

Jemma mentally gave herself a high five.

“Oh… thank you. I thought it was cute as well.” 

For a few moments after Daisy sat down and got settled neither woman really knew what to say. Jemma smiled her empty, manic smile which did a much poorer job hiding her anxiety than she thought it did. She sipped her water nervously. Daisy smiled in a way that was non-threatening, but equally at a loss.

“So uh, you ever had brunch here before?” Daisy finally managed.

“Never! I erm, read some good reviews on Yelp though.”

“You’re like Fitz, he always looks everything up before we go out. He’s a real planner.” Daisy said.

“Does he really?” Jemma smiled at that. Her friends back in California all called her the planner as well. It seemed like even after drifting apart the Fitz and she remained quite similar. “Well he’s quite a nerd, so what can you expect?” Jemma said.

“I can’t call anybody else a nerd, I majored in computer science.” Daisy said.

“Really? You know, I’ve never met anyone who actually got a degree in computer science, they all got a job halfway through uni and then dropped out.”

“Shut up, that is exactly what I did!” Daisy laughed her raspy, pleasant laugh. “Learning computer science is hell on earth. It’s better to just do it.” 

“God I feel like I’ve been in school my whole life.” Jemma said. “It must be nice to be able to just do what you love.”

“Love is a strong word.” Daisy took another sip of water. “I do something that I am very good at doing and that people are willing to pay me for. I’m jealous of like, people like Fitz, that are just like so obviously made to do what they do.” 

“Fitz is an amazing engineer, I always loved to watch him work.”

Daisy leaned back to allow their waitress to give her her bloody mary, and she raised an eyebrow at Jemma.

“You must be like that with biochemistry though right? Fitz always said you were spectacular. He talked about your work with Dr. Weaver like you were going to save the world.” 

Jemma flushed, this converstation wasn’t going the direction she wanted it to.

“How did you meet Fitz?” Jemma asked.

“Ah!” Daisy leaned forward, conspiratorially. “So, the thing is, Fitz has a tendency to try to like, tweak his own computer to make it do the stuff he wants it to do in a unique way that actually fucks up every computer in like, the whole U.S. government.” Daisy said in a tone that was only kind of amused. “I joke that I owe him my job because I’m the only asshole out there good enough to fix his spectacular mistakes. I’m in his lab like three times a week.”

“Seriously? Oh my God, I’m going to have to tease him about that.” 

“PLEASE be my guest, he’ll listen to you, maybe.” 

Jemma tilted her head in interest.

“What makes you say that?” She asked.

“Oh, uh…” Daisy had made a solemn vow to Fitz not to say anything that might compromise him, “you know, you two are such good old friends.”

Jemma sighed.

“All my friends seem to be men.” She admitted. “I’m sorry, that is sort of why I invited you out, I needed someone to vent to. Not that men aren’t sympathetic…”

“No girl, I get you. It depends on the topic.” Daisy said. “Try to vent to a man about another man and they get this stupid defense mechanism going on.”

“Oh GOD, yes.” 

“Or they’re just trying to fuck you. Sorry, I’m a little jaded from two years studying computer science.”

Jemma raised her mimosa in solidarity and the two women clinked glasses.

“Fitz was never like that, though, have you noticed?” Jemma said.

“Ok, true, Fitz is a good listener. You should have invited him to this brunch.” Daisy laughed. “He’d love it, he loves alcohol at 10AM on a Sunday.”

“Well…” Jemma tried to figure out a way to admit that she needed to vent about Fitz so he couldn’t be involved. “He’s been a bit off with me, since I moved here, I don’t know.” 

Daisy leaned back in her chair nervously. 

“Hold up, are you asking me to dish on Fitz?” 

“No! Well… maybe a little.” Jemma rubbed her temples. “It’s just, Will’s never around because he’s always doing his astronaut thing, and I’d like to spend time with Fitz again like friends but it seems like it’s weird now that I’m married? And it shouldn’t be! Because it was never like that with me and Fitz before!”

“Will’s astronaut stuff must keep him out of the house a lot, huh?” Daisy tried to steer the conversation away from dangerous waters. 

“He has to be on base at like, 4 am, sometimes 2 am. And then he spends all day bonding with the rest of his class and… you know…” Jemma was well into her second mimosa and feeling a little bit fuzzy. “I didn’t even want to move here, he sort of put his foot down.”

“Oh shit.” Daisy leaned forward. “He forced this move?”

“I mean, he’s right, it is a wonderful opportunity.” Jemma nodded. “For… him.”

“Not so much for you?”

Jemma gave Daisy a long suffering stare.

“I have an interview at a Urology lab.” She said, flatly.

“Oh shiiiit!” Daisy gasped.

“But that’s awful of me isn’t it? I mean he’s a fucking astronaut, right? I can’t hold him back from that.” The way Jemma lowered her voice when she swore almost made Daisy fall in love with her right then.

“He should have asked you. You should have discussed it.” Daisy said, apparently quite the marriage expert for a perennially single IT person.

A framework shifted in Jemma’s mind, though. She had been feeling guilty for weeks, months, because she felt that her obligation as Will’s wife was to be happy for him for living his dream, becoming an astronaut. That he might not have lived up to his side of the marriage bargain by just taking this huge step without even consulting with her… that changed things.

“Good lord.” Jemma said. “That’s right, isn’t it? Daisy, thank you so much! I was starting to think, you know, ridiculous things like, maybe I was in love with Fitz or something and that’s why things were so weird…”

“Wait, what?” Daisy said, but Jemma plowed forward.

“But I’m probably just still upset with Will! I’m feeling abandoned by Will and I’m projecting that strangeness onto my relationship with Fitz…”

“Yeah, but did you say…”

“Oh my goodness, thank you so much. I know I was really weird about this brunch but this has been amazing, I really needed to work this out.”

“Mm hmm.” Daisy sipped the dregs of her bloody mary, mind moving a mile a minute. 

~*~

After brunch Jemma approached her newly purchased home like an adversary. It was larger than any house Jemma had ever imagined herself inhabiting, but Will’s income could afford it, and he seemed to love it, so there they were. She’d been avoiding unpacking because she wanted Will’s help, but he worked so much and came home so exhausted that he was never up for it. He knew better than to say it, but she could feel him wondering what she did all day if she wasn’t going to even unpack. The stacked boxes seemed to judge her as she tried to answer some emails at the kitchen table. Eventually she snapped the laptop shut, directed a pointed sigh at the boxes, and took a boxcutter to the ones labed “Living room.” It wasn’t a sexist thing, she kept telling herself, she was just doing most of the housework because she didn’t’ have a job yet and things had just worked out that way. 

Once she had everything out of boxes and arranged in the living room she was disappointed to find that the room dwarfed the few furnishings which had made their previous apartment together so comfortable. Her beloved, most comfortable couch, one of the few items she had brought with her from her Uni days, worn and frayed from years of use, looked bizarre and tacky against a large pale wall and vaulted ceiling. It wasn’t an easy fix either, she wouldn’t be able to accessorize around it. The option of getting rid of the couch versus the possibility of moving it or putting it into storage or somehow… buying a new house? All seemed to press in on her. She had no obligations for the rest of the day and yet her stress level was at an 11. She ended up retreating into the bedroom, shutting the door to the living room with a bang and watching a few episodes of the Great British Bake-Off. 

Will came home, as usual, late.

“Hey babe! Way to get the living room unpacked!” He shouted from the other room. Jemma, who was invested in whether or not the butter was all going to run out of her favorite contestant’s puff pastry, felt a prickle of irritation. 

“I hate it.” She yelled back.

“What?” Will asked, looking around the room. “It looks nice!”

With a groan Jemma paused the show on her laptop and stood in the doorway of their bedroom.

“Whatever.” She said. “We need to buy some rugs or something.”

“Whatever you want, hon.” Will spoke slowly and gently as he circled the room, like Jemma was some wild animal he didn’t want to startle. “How was your brunch?”

“Oh, just lovely.” Jemma said with a breath of relief. “Daisy’s really very charming actually, we got on quite well.”

“Good! I’m glad you’re making friends.” Will smiled. “Did you uh, see Fitz?” 

“No.” Thinking back to her and Daisy’s conversation that morning, Jemma braced herself to start a somewhat uncomfortable conversation.

“You should call him.” Will said.

“What… Pardon?” Jemma asked.

“I uh, I’m going to be going over to Nevada with the class next week, we’re going to be there for five days. They said they’d prefer if spouses didn’t come.” 

“Oh.” Jemma rapped her fingers against the door frame. 

“And I know you and Fitz and Daisy are getting to be good friends, and I think it would be good if you all hung out. So you won’t be lonely.” 

Will had given the matter a lot of thought ever since his major had announced the trip. He’d barely been able to focus for the rest of the day. The last thing he wanted was Jemma festering away at home, watching Netflix and stewing in her own irritation at him. The only time she seemed to smile these days was when Fitz texted her or something. He might be able to pull her back from this brink.

“I didn’t cook anything.” Jemma snapped. Back in California they would have bickered fondly over where to order from. Somehow in Texas she felt like a disappointment. “Pizza?” 

“Sounds good.” Will said.


	4. Don't Hurt Yourself

The next Thursday, Daisy Johnson gave her apartment its first swiffer dusting since she had moved in three years ago. (The dust and bugs from the top of her bookshelf almost made her throw in the towel and just burn the whole goddamn place down.) She pulled out a large stack of board games she had collected over her nerdy lifetime, put on her go-to “chill with friends” Spotify playlist, set out some Trader Joes snacks, poured herself a beer, and awaited the arrival of her guests for her first ever, “game night.” 

Mack and Fitz showed up first, about ten minutes early, Mack carrying a bottle of wine and Fitz lugging two board games, 7 Wonders and Ticket to Ride.

“Welcome!” Daisy said, gesturing grandly to the interior of her apartment. “Come in!”

Fitz eyed the dimly lit basement level apartment, taking in Daisy’s various unframed video game posters and heavily dinged up IKEA furnishings. Multiple action figures with impressively high POA counts stood posed on bookshelves and windowsills. “Very nice!” He said. 

“Thank you!” Daisy replied brightly, taking the wine and steering her two guests towards the snack table. As she did so she added, in a quick low tone like she didn’t really want them to hear it, “By the way, Jemma and Elena are both coming.” 

“WHAT!?” Both Fitz and Mack turned to stare at her, but before either of them could freak out the doorbell rang again and Daisy scampered off to answer it. Lo and behold, it was a perfectly on time, as well as coiffed, Dr. Jemma Simmons, carrying her own edition of 7 Wonders and a Tupperware full of homemade hummus.

“I’m so happy you invited me! The house is absolutely terrifying with Will gone, I feel like I’m in some sort of abandoned dungeon.” She said, somehow apologetically. 

“That sucks! Come on in, buddy!” Daisy said, hooking her arm around Jemma’s shoulders and accompanying her into the kitchen. She raised her eyebrows at Fitz, who shot her a truly evil death glare.

“Hello FItz!” Jemma said cheerily. “And Mack!” She gave him a little wave.

And in a second Fitz’s glare was replaced with a real smile. It was no use, as much as he knew he needed to avoid Jemma he never regretted actually being with her. Any interaction with her was, without exception, the best part of his day. Back at university when they had been inseparable had, in hindsight, been close to perfect bliss. 

Fitz had known something was up since the moment he saw Daisy’s email invitation. She never let people into her living space, and while the three of them teamed up on certain video games from time to time, they’d never hosted a real honest to goodness nerd game night. Fitz had, however, suggested doing so multiple times in the past. He fucking loved games.

“Mack’s pissed at me because I invited Elena, because he’s too chicken-shit to ask her out.” Daisy said as a conversation starter. “Who wants drinks!?”

“ME.” Jemma and Mack both agreed with a touch too much intensity. Fitz laughed.

“Nice game.” Fitz gestured to Jemma’s edition of 7 Wonders. “I brought it as well. Is this like the nerd version of showing up to a party in the same dress?”

“Well it depends on who wears it better.” Jemma joked.

“Ooh, or who PLAYS it better.” Daisy said, returning to the table with two beers for Mack and Jemma, and a shot of whiskey for Fitz. 

“I didn’t ask for…” Fitz began, but stopped short at Daisy’s smile. He took the shot.

Eventually Elena showed up dressed in sleeveless black top that showed off her Michelle Obama arms and jeans which hugged every curve. She’d done a smoky eye which made her look sexy and mysterious and like she had never attended a nerd board game night in her life. 

“Hold on,” she said, glancing at the stack of board games on the kitchen table. “board games? like… for kids? I thought this was a poker night.” 

“I’ll bet you’d be dangerous at poker.” Mack said with the half smile he reserved for the baddest women. 

Elena smiled back and tossed her hair.

“You bet.” She said.

“Oh good lord.” Jemma said out loud. She’d never witnessed anything close to this level of confident flirting. Fitz held up a beer in commisseration and the two of them toasted their own social inadequacy.

Jemma won the first round of 7 Wonders, which, to be perfectly frank, was about 20% actual game play and 80% Fitz and Jemma speaking over one another to try to explain the rules. Afterwards they played a few rounds of settlers of Catan, which, for some reason, everyone picked up much more quickly. Haggling got pretty heated.

“For fuck’s sake, Simmons, I know you’ve got that bloody stone, just trade it!” Fitz griped. He was five drinks deep.

“If you think I’m going to part with this precious stone for your garbage bricks…” 

“They’re perfectly good bricks! You need bricks!!”

“Death before dishonor.” 

“WHAT!?”

“I’ve got some stone, if the price is right.” Elena said.

“Don’t you fucking do it Elena!” Jemma practically shouted. “If he gets that stone he’s buying another city and then we’re all fucked!”

“But I need the bricks!” Elena whispered

“I’ll give all mine to you on your turn.” Jemma said.

“WHAT!?!?” Fitz was honestly stunned, but Mack, Daisy, and Elena, were all laughing too hard for him to take it too seriously. 

“Bricks! All yours, for free, just DO NOT HELP FITZ.”

“What did I ever do to you?” Fitz exclaimed with a helpless gesture.

“You won the last round of the game Fitz, this is how it’s played.” Daisy said. “You’re our mortal enemy until we get revenge.

“You’re all mad.” Fitz shook his head, taking another swig of beer, but he was laughing under his breath.

Later in the evening, with the sun well down and after Fitz had decided fuck it, and just finished a six pack, games had been abandoned for favor of conversations. Mack and Elena were close talking to one another, the way that people in shady corners of bars do before finally just making out. Daisy had committed the ultimate hostess faux pas of falling asleep at her own party, and was snoozing on the couch next to her laptop, where she had been adding songs to the Spotify playlist before her sleepiness got the better of her. Fitz and Jemma were talking the way they used to in college, jumping from topic to topic with the smallest of excuses and following one another’s leads until they were both laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. 

“This is ridiculous, it’s so late, I should go.” Jemma wheezed after a particularly delightful chemistry pun.

“Noo!” Fitz complained. “It’s not THAT late” he glanced at his phone. “Fine, it’s pretty late, but look at her, she doesn’t care.” 

They looked over at Daisy, splayed out awkwardly over her own couch, passed out like a drunken angel. 

“I was going to ask her to come over tonight, I HATE my empty house.” Jemma muttered.

Fitz nodded sympathetically. Even back when she lived in a dorm room Jemma had hated when her roommate was out. She had used to call him to distract herself from all the weird ghost/alien/home intruder scenarios she would dream up. 

Both of them realized the obvious alternative option at the same time. Fitz’s palms immediately started to sweat, and he took another slug of his beer. 

“Fitz! I know it’s stupid, but I’ve got a lovely great big sofa. Could you?”

“I…” The playlist, in its autoplay, had rolled back around to “Don’t Hurt Yourself’ off of Beyonce’s Lemonade. Fitz cursed its timing. “What are you asking?” He asked.

“Oh just come over. Will keeps telling me to spend more time with you, he’d be chuffed to bits.” 

Fitz somehow doubted that.

“Hey Fitz?” Mack tapped his roommates shoulder. He had his arm wrapped comfortably around Elena’s waist, and she was grinning giddily. “We’re uh, heading out. You good?” 

“Oh!” Fitz’s eyes darted between Mack and Elena watching helplessly as his final lifeline to decent healthy choices floated away. “I’m, uh, good, I’ll see you tomorrow yeah?”

“Sure thing, turbo.” Mack winked, completely unaware of the course of action Fitz was getting more enthusiastic about taking by the second. He and Elena left Daisy’s tiny apartment together, laughing loudly enough as they walked down the stairwell that Fitz and Jemma could hear it inside. 

Daisy was gently roused to consciousness by a nudge, and her eyes fluttered open to take in the pale, slightly out of focus faces of Jemma and Fitz. 

“We’re heading out! Lovely party!” Fitz said. “Thanks for throwing it.” 

Before Daisy could completely register what was happening the door was shut, and her apartment was back to its normal, quiet, empty state. She sleepily dragged herself up to lock the door, and gave no thought to what her guests were up to.

Fitz and Jemma both avoided glancing at one another during the 25 minute Uber ride to Jemma’s large, conspicuously empty home.

“Wow!” Fitz breathed as stepped into the massive and impressive foyer of the Simmons/Daniels home. In the daylight the large vaulted windows over the doorway must flood the entryway with light, but at night, the light from a couple wobbly looking standing lamps couldn’t make it all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. Long shadows cast around the room at strange angles, and abovethem, for all Fitz could tell, was a black abyss. 

“Want a drink?” Jemma asked, voice aggressively upbeat as she flipped a lightswitch in the mostly empty dining room and stepped purposefully over to a small dark wooden sideboard. Fitz blinked in the sudden onslaught of light.

“I…” Fitz was going to say that he probably shouldn’t, but after making a number of decisions that evening that he probably shouldn’t have, he ended up just shrugging and saying “Sure.” 

“Bollocks, I’m out of red.” Jemma frowned at her very grown-up looking wine rack and glanced over her shoulder at him. “You want a sherry?”

“What are we, middle-class Londoners in the ‘50s?” Fitz asked with a laugh.

“Yes, Fitz, OBVIOUSLY.” Jemma ignored his protests and poured two glasses of sherry into tiny crystal cups her aunt had bought her off of her wedding registry. This was the first time Jemma had actually used them.

“Cheers.”Jemma said, raising her small, elegant glass to Fitz’s. He clinked his against hers with an expression that was difficult to read. For a moment they stood opposite each other in the strange brightness of the dining room, sipping their sherry and doing their best to read eachother’s minds. 

“You’re right.” Fitz said, after a long pause. “This house is fucking terrifying.” 

“RIGHT!?” Jemma laughed in relief. “Ugh it’s so dark and quiet and then it’s just… not? Like there are these terrible creaking noises and last night… ohmygoodness, you will not believe it but last night I swear to god the whole house was surrounded by a pack of coyotes.” 

“That… doesn’t sound like something that actually happened.” Fitz said.

“It DID!” Jemma insisted with a laugh. Fitz felt a pang of heartache as he watched her beautiful smile. They knew one another so well, and with the comfortable familiarity of old friends he could tell that Jemma just needed him in the house to protect her from the (probably imaginary) coyotes, while he needed to be near her for more primal, difficult to explain reasons. 

“So where’s this lovely big sofa?” He asked, finishing the rest of his sherry in a swig.

“Oh, it’s over here.” Jemma said, leading him over to her beloved old college couch, still sitting incongruously within her new bougie home. 

“Hold on… didn’t you have this at school?” Fitz asked, with that amazing sensitivity that set him apart from any other man she’d encountered in her life.

“I did!” Jemma flopped down on the couch with a little sigh, running her fingers over the soft, familar fabric. “She’s been with me for years.”

“She?” Fitz sat down on the other end, sinking comfortably into the worn cushions. He seemed to remember spilling some sort of energy drink on this couch during one of their study sessions. “You didn’t name her, did you?”

“Oh shut up.” Jemma sighed. She slunk, or was Fitz imagining it? A little bit closer to him from where she had sat down, close enough that their arms were almost touching. The way they used to sit next to each other at school. Fitz took a deep, shaky breath, trying to keep it together. He was a grown man. Sure, he was in love with Jemma, but that didn’t mean he had to be an asshole. She was married to somebody else. He’d decided to spend the night at her house because he just loved to torture himself, that was all.

“We’re probably going to throw her out.” Jemma said, voice strangely low.

“What? The couch? Why? She’s perfect.” Fitz snuggled even deeper into the seat, looking like nothing else but a puppy settling down for a nap. Jemma smiled at him.

“She doesn’t work in the room. I’ve got to get something more… I don’t know.”

“HGTV?” Fitz suggested.

“Oh God, you’re right.” 

“I watched an episode of House Hunters last week after you told me about it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was like watching a really boring train wreck.” Fitz admitted.

“But you had to find out which one they picked, didn’t you?” Jemma said, raising an eyebrow.

“I DID IT WAS AWFUL.” Fitz said. 

Jemma cackled wickedly, and this time, Fitz knew he wasn’t imagining it, she did sneak a little bit closer to him. She was pressed up against his arm the way they used to sit after they’d had a few drinks at school. His heart started to pound, so rapidly he could feel it in his throat, and he could hear a hum of high blood pressure in his ears.

Fitz tried to weigh his options. It was certainly possible, even probable, that Simmons was flirting with him. She was definitely making physical contact, she had invited him over to her house, and she had repeatedly made a big deal about the fact that her husband was out of town. If they lived in some kind of low budget porn universe, all of these would be clear flirtatious signals. On the other hand, this wasn’t a low budget porn universe, this was real life. He knew from multiple panicked phone calls back at school that she did hate empty houses, they had used to platonically cuddle all the time back in the day, and Jemma was nothing if not a touchy feely drunk.

“I miss us.” Jemma said softly, nestling into him. 

Fitz took a deep, shaky inhale of breath. He felt as though every cell in his body was vibrating with tension. The line between the man he wanted to be and the man he was was so hopelessly muddled that he didn’t even know what the right thing to do was anymore. It would be so easy to kiss her right now. She was so close, he could feel her warm breath on his neck. 

Fitz gave Jemma a small kiss on the top of her head, and then snuggled into her side.

As far as grand romantic gestures go, it was underwhelming. His recurring dream of sweeping Jemma into his arms and making out with her in the chem lab were much more grandiose and exhilarating. As it was he had barely even moved, and his first sign of romantic affection could easily have been mistaken for a tipsy and platonic gesture. 

But the tension in the room shifted. Jemma, whose eyes had been fluttering into a drowsy half liddedness, suddenly glanced up, clear and alert. 

Fitz’s instinct was to apologize, to pull back. But Jemma’s expression wasn’t registering as horror or disgust, and he found himself frozen, staring back into her lovely dark eyes, just inches away.

Jemma, with aching slowness, tilted her face up to Fitz’s, closing her eyes, and placed a deliberate, gentle, small kiss on his lips.

“Jemma.” Fitz whispered, and years of repressed emotion came flooding up. He felt like he was drowning in it, barely able to keep himself together. “God, Jemma.” 

He still didn’t kiss her though. The same fear that had frozen his arm when he tried to knock on her door in college and had made him dial her number and then erase it 50 times when he saw her engagement announcement overwhelmed him. He sat perfectly still. His eyes shone with an earnest, desperate passion that Jemma had never seen before. He looked like a completely different person, and Jemma realized for the first time that he loved her.

Stiffening, Jemma recoiled back. If Fitz had been gazing at her this adoringly behind her back for years, then she must have been the most insensitive, oblivious, asshole the world had ever seen. What was she doing right now? What about Will? She’d been reckless, and now she had very possibly seriously hurt two of the people closest to her.

“I’m, um, I’ve got to go.” Jemma said, standing up quickly and banging her ankle into the coffee table very hard. 

“Right.” Fitz said, struggling to fight all that repressed emotion back down to where it had been festering for years. “Right, yeah.” 

“Good night!” Jemma said, in a sort of strangled, panicked way. She realized as she fled upstairs that she hadn’t brought Fitz down any sheets or pillows or blankets, but she just cringed and decided not to deal with it. Fitz didn’t even notice, he just curled up in a little miserable ball at the end of the couch and sat, eyes wide in horror, reliving every detail of what had just occurred. 

Every time Jemma drifted off to sleep that night she repeated some version of the same dream, in which Fitz climbed into bed next to her. In some of them she would lay silently next to him, agonizing over whether or not she should reach over to him, completely unaware that she was asleep until she would wake up with a jolt and find herself alone in bed. In some of the dreams she was furious at his imposition and would tell him off, shouting at him to get out of there and leave her alone and how dare he, etc. Those dreams too would end abruptly, as she woke up unrested with the feeling that she had been mumbling aloud in her sleep. 

The version of the dream that repeated the most frequently was also, to Jemma, the most troubling. In it, just like the other dreams, Fitz would silently creep into her room and climb into bed with her. In this version of the dream, Jemma had hoped he would do this. Dream Jemma had invited Fitz to her house with the hope that he would do exactly this. Dream Jemma would turn quietly to face Fitz and meet his eyes, taking in that loving gaze that had stunned her so much earlier in the evening. She would put her hand on the side of her best friend’s face and snuggle closer, feeling the weight of the blankets and the rough stubble of his cheek, hearing his quiet, nervous intakes of breath. She would lean in closer and kiss him, more purposefully than awake Jemma had, with something closer to passion. 

Jemma woke up, for what felt like the fiftieth time, with a start. Her mouth was dry and there was a hell of a crick in her neck from the nasty angle at which she had slept. The sun shone through her bedroom curtains, and when she anxiously grabbed her phone to check the time she saw that it was 10:30am, much later than she had anticipated sleeping. 

“Shit.” She whispered, flinging off the covers and scrambling out of bed. She dug around her closet for her robe. 

“Fitz?” She called out as she ran downstairs. What a bad hostess, not only had she just left her guest on her couch with zero blankets or pillows, she hadn’t even told him where the bathroom was, or what they would do for breakfast the next day. 

The couch was empty. On her coffee table, scribbled on the back of a wrinkled receipt, lay a note.

“Called an uber to take me home. Best, Fitz.”

Jemma sighed. She slumped back down on her couch, exhausted, miserable, and practically overcome with guilt. 

Fitz discovered, upon his arrival back at his apartment, that Mack had driven with Elena, and Fitz’s car, which he had left at Daisy’s, had been towed.

It was gonna cost him.


	5. Butter Chicken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the final chapter of The Life That Chose You! I'm sorry that it took me so long to update. I hope you enjoy, and, again, thanks for sticking with me.

At 4:30am on a Sunday Daisy answered a call from a panicked technician from the Space Center reporting some kind of apocalyptic network crash. She dragged herself into work with with full bedhead, having slung on an old band t-shirt and jeans and called it good enough. Fortunately, the crash was fixable. It seemed like it exactly the sort the thing that Fitz would cause, and she made a mental note to rip him a new one the next time she saw him. For now, though, she drove home after a 12 hour day, ready to microwave some pizza bagels and fall asleep in front of The Bachelorette. 

To her surprise, as she approached the door to her apartment she met face to face with an awkward Jemma Simmons, carrying a bottle of red wine and looking like she didn’t know what to do with her arms.

"I only just got here! I wasn't waiting outside your apartment!" Jemma said, in lieu of greeting.

"Jemma! Did we... have plans?" Daisy asked, racking her memory.

"No! I, erm..." Jemma stood there, tapping her leg at a rapid, anxious pace. "I kissed Fitz." She blurted. "And I need to talk to somebody about it or I will actually physically die." 

"HOLY SHIT." Daisy covered her mouth. "Girl, come inside." 

A half hour and a generously poured glass of wine later, Jemma finished recapping what had happened between her and Fitz (only leaving out her stress dreams) and Daisy sat on the couch, trying to figure out the best thing to do.

"I mean, I'm trying to figure out a way you could tell Will that you invited a man to sleep over at your house while he was away on a work trip that's not like, sketch as hell." She said.

"Yes, in hindsight I am realizing that perhaps inviting Fitz over was a mistake." Jemma admitted. "It looks really... really bad. But it's Fitz! Nothing like that has EVER happened between us before! I never even suspected that Fitz might… you know, have feelings..."

Daisy raised an almost excessively skeptical eyebrow.

"You've never suspected?" She asked.

Jemma's jaw dropped.

"Daisy!" She admonished. "Of course not!"

"Because, let's be honest here, I suspected, before I'd even met you. And you told me at that brunch that you thought you might be in love with him." 

Jemma's eyes widened in horror and she sank further into her seat.

"God, was I subconsciously trying to seduce him?" She muttered. 

"Look, I don't know what you were trying to do, but the real issue here is Will." Daisy pointed out. 

Jemma, who had been in a state of paralyzing anxiety ever since fleeing Fitz, couldn't even bring herself to think about Will without completely shutting down. At the sound of his name she audibly groaned and curled up into a little ball. The prospect of telling Will what had happened, and seeing his crushed and hurt expression was too much to handle. 

If Jemma had been having this conversation with Mack he would have told her to suck it up. She'd fucked up and she was going to have to deal with the consequences. The only course of action was to tell Will what had happened and deal with the fallout from there. 

But Jemma wasn't talking to Will.

"As I see it you've got two options." Daisy said. "And they depend on the answer to my next question." Daisy settled into her seat and gave Jemma her best Oprah interrogational stare. "Jemma Simmons. Do you have romantic feelings towards Leopold James Fitz?"

"What!?" Jemma asked in disbelief. 

“Here’s the thing though, if you DON’T, then I see absolutely no reason why you would have to tell Will anything happened. You can just tell him you suspect Fitz has feelings for you, you both agree to cut him out of your life and never speak to him again, and you stay happily married. Fitz'll never tell, I'll never tell, and if it's never gonna happen again, no harm no foul. I mean Fitz is gonna get hurt real bad but that seems to be pretty standard."

"That's not fair!" Jemma said. "I have very strong... friendship feelings..."

"Nope, you're married to somebody else and you kissed Fitz, that's all messed up forever, sorry." Daisy said. “But, this way, you stay married and you avoid any huge heartache on Will’s part.”

“I just have to live with the knowledge that I kissed somebody else and let that guilt rot away at my soul?” Jemma asked. Daisy ignored her.

“But if you DO have romantic feelings for Fitz then the three of you are gonna have to hash this thing out.”

Jemma stared very hard at her empty wine glass, too stressed out to have any idea what she was feeling. The thought of never seeing Fitz again made her throat close up. However, the idea of telling Will what had happened…

“Fuck everything.” Jemma groaned, pouring another glass.

“I’m sorry babe.” Daisy rubbed her friend’s back. “I’m sorry, this is gonna fucking suck.”

~*~

Fitz had given the matter a lot of thought, and decided that there was only one thing he could do.

A grand romantic gesture.

The fact was, deep down, he had always known he was a fucking romantic idiot. He owned the entire Tegan and Sara discography and could sing along with every word.

Somewhere between his inital panicked uber drive home and the grim, playboy magazine decorated interior of the towing office, Fitz had gone back through the events of game night and realized something very important. Jemma had kissed him back. Sure, she’d recoiled moments afterwards, but for a brief, beautiful moment, Jemma Simmons had kissed him on the mouth. 

A small flicker of hope that Fitz had been trying to extinguish for over a decade had roared into full flame, and before he’d really thought through all the consequences he’d purchased a large bouquet of flowers and was now sitting with it, inhaling its sickly chemically enhanced scent from his passenger’s seat, as he sat in his car across the street from her house.

The optimism that had confidently sent him to the florist’s had drastically diminished in the thirty minutes of parking across the street from Jemma’s house like a creeper. He’d rang the doorbell, but she wasn’t home. Absent Jemma had not crossed his mind as a possibility, and the longer he sat in his car waiting the more he was absolutely positive that he if he left then, he’d never get up the nerve to actually drive over again. So he sat, trying to fight the rising terror that was telling him to give up, to drive home. 

He jumped a little bit when he recognized her car in his rearview mirror, pulling up over the hill and turning into her driveway. He reached for the bouquet, slimy from the plant water which had been seepinginto his passenger’s seat for the past 20 minutes, but just as he opened the door to his car, ready to run up and just do it, just declare his feelings for Jemma, he stopped. Will Daniels stepped out of the passenger’s side door of Jemma’s car and pulled out a large duffel bag. Jemma stepped out of the car next, smiling brightly and carrying a bag of takeout. 

Fitz slammed his car door shut. He’d done it again. He’d missed his chance.

~*~

 

Normally when Fitz was trying to stay afloat amidst his own (self-made, he’d be the first to remind you) sea of self-pity, he could call on Mack as a kind of life line.

But Mack had been out more nights than he had been in the last few weeks, with Elena. The two of them were compatible as hell, they chatted on the phone at all hours, and spent every spare second together. And Fitz couldn’t even complain, she was a pretty great third roommate. If she stayed overnight she was the type of person to tidy up the kitchen and buy Fitz really good bags of fresh ground coffee to make up for the inconvenience. Mack basically glowed with delight at the sound of Elena’s voice, and Fitz watched the two of them with confused envy, from deep within his own well of misery and despair.

Fitz couldn’t bring himself to drag Mack down from such blissful heights into his depressing, pathetic bullshit. So he shut in on himself, putting up barriers against everyone. Daisy asked him so many questions about what had happened after her party that Fitz stopped going to their usual taco joint and avoided speaking to her at work. If they needed IT help (which his lab did, frequently) he made sure to be out of the office or in the cafeteria when she came. Eventually her texts, emails, and facebook messages slowed, and Fitz felt, truly, for the first time, completely alone. Just as he deserved.

One Friday evening, when Mack and Elena were out at her great aunt’s 88th birthday dinner and Fitz was too exhausted and numb to make the trek to the grocery store to buy some refrigerated sushi, he decided to do the thing he did when he was feeling particularly depressed and go to a nearby Indian restaurant and eat by himself at the bar. 

The restaurant “Maharaja” did not make any “Best of Houston” lists, but it served spicy and creamy curries in large, comforting portions. Fitz was pretty much a regular. That is to say, the owner of the restaurant recognized him, but Fitz stubbornly refused to interact with him beyond the bare necessities of placing an order.

Before Fitz could open his mouth to get his usual (Butter Chicken, he was too depressed even for Chicken Tikka Masala) a voice which was like a bucket of ice cold water down his back called to him from across the restaurant. 

“Fitz! Is that you, buddy?” Will Daniels greeted him, loudly enough that other diners looked up in irritation. Will didn’t notice his wife’s expression freeze in horror as she snapped to see if he was right. Fitz noticed. He almost fell off the stool in his effort to get the hell out of there.

Jemma had, it should be mentioned, dialed and erased Fitz’s phone number about 800 times in the few weeks since the incident. She told herself that breaking Fitz’s heart would be like tearing off a bandaid, painful but necessary and better done all at once. As much as she told herself that, the thought of never speaking to Fitz again nearly sent her into a panic attack every time. She ended up shutting off her phone, throwing it into the deepest darkest recesses of her purse and making the ever-popular choice of not making a choice. She’d postpone the inevitable until it bit her in the ass. 

It was too late. Will stood up and grinned as he walked over to Fitz, who was absolutely frozen in fear like a rabbit beneath a red-tailed hawk. He contemplated just sprinting out of the restaurant, but years of social conditioning forced him to smile the fakest smile in the history of the world and extend a sweaty hand to shake.

“Will!” Fitz said, sounding strangled. “Good to see ya, small world.” 

“Come join us! Jemma and I just got here!” Will offered.

“I, oh, I can’t, I was just erm…” Fitz couldn’t think of a plausible lie before Will began to physically steer him towards their table and flag down a waitress for another menu. Jemma sat frozen in her seat trying to mask her absolute horror at their current situation. 

Will sat Fitz next to Jemma. The centimeters of distance between the old friends had never felt so electrically uncomfortable, and Fitz basically hung off of the side of the booth, ready to jump up and sprint away at the slightest provocation.

Jemma bit her cheek in irritation at her husband as he rambled on at Fitz about some space shuttle thing that she didn’t give a damn about. She kept glancing to her right, taking in Fitz’s anxiously tapping leg and the few drops of sweat forming on his temple. She didn’t know what to do, so she just shoved the complimentary papadum in the center of the table in her mouth at a frightening pace. She emptied the basket in about two minutes. Every once in a while, her glance towards Fitz would be met with a side glance from him, and they would both flush and look down. 

“Pardon me,” Fitz suprised Jemma by cutting Will off mid-sentence. “Erm, Jemma, would you mind speaking to me outside for a moment?” 

“What?” Will asked.

“Just one moment darling.” Jemma said, meeting Fitz’s eyes and nodding in agreement. “If the waitress comes just get me a butter chicken.” 

The two of them swept out of the restaurant. Fitz felt dizzy, but when they stepped outside into the warm, dry air and onto the sidewalk, still coolling from the hot Texas sun, the world seemed to settle somewhat.

“Jemma, I’m so sorry.” He said. 

“No, I’m sorry I’ve meant to call you for ages.” Jemma said. She glanced at him apologetically, but couldn’t find the words to continue.

“I…” Fitz began, but stopped himself again. The sun had just set and the heat of the day was diffusing into a kind of blanket warmth. The restaurant’s neon lighting flashed orange and green on Jemma’s face, and intermittently the restaurant door would open and jingling bells would announce the arrival or exit of another customer. Jemma, with her hair up in a messy bun and her eyeliner smudged at the end of a long day, looked, to Fitz, like some kind of angel. He swallowed. “Jemma, I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time, and I’m terribly sorry about it.” 

A tightness, that Fitz had been carrying pretty much since he’d held up his fist to knock on Jemma’s old apartment’s door so many years ago, suddenly released. He had to put his hand on the wall of the restaurant to steady himself. He’d said it. She could hate him now, but at least he had said those words out loud.

“Oh… Fitz.” Jemma whispered, putting her hand over her mouth. She glanced back into the restaurant, where she saw Will sitting alone, craning his neck to see what was going on. She glanced back at Fitz, and whispered urgently, “Wait here.” 

She jogged back inside, dodging around groups of happy diners until she made it back over to their table.

“Will,” She whispered, “Darling, I’m so sorry, but Fitz’s mum just died.”

“Oh no!” Will looked honestly hurt. “Oh my God, is he ok?” 

“Not really at all, but I’m going to just drive him home I think. He’s in a bad state. Darling I’m so sorry, but do you mind taking the food home?”

“Of course! You, you tell him I’m sorry ok? And that we’re here for him?” 

“I will.” Jemma surprised herself with how easily the lies came. “I’m going to go back out, I think, if that’s…” 

“Of course, go ahead.” Will looked understanding and kind, and Jemma couldn’t believe that all she felt was relief that he had believed her. She grabbed her purse and ran out to meet up with Fitz. He was standing where she left him, still leaning against the side of the restaurant and looking pale and shaky. 

“Where’s your car?” She asked.

“It’s…” Fitz gestured to the side of the parking lot where he had parked it, trying to piece together what was going on.

“Let’s go.” Jemma, defying all expectation and logic, took Fitz’s arm and walked with him towards his parking spot. When he stared at her in dumb amazement she glanced up again. “I’ve told him your mum died and I’m taking you home. We need to talk.” 

“Oh…” Fitz tried to wrap his mind around what was happening. “Where… to?”

Jemma looked up at him, and her expression was strangely determined.

“Anywhere. Away from here.”

The two of them ended up at Sesquicentennial park in Downtown Houston. Fitz wasn’t sure where else to go, and Jemma, who had sunk into his passenger’s seat like a rag doll and not spoken since, hadn’t really given him much of an idea what she was looking for.

While Jemma appeared to have melted, Fitz’s whole body thrummed with excited energy. He felt drunk, and he was having a hard time feeling his hands and feet. The burden of keeping his feelings for Jemma a secret was lifted and Fitz felt like a person just stumbling into sunlight after being trapped underground for 15 years. 

The park’s walkway was cement paved, with a little ornamental stone wall between the walkers and the brownish, murky water of the park river. At this hour of night there were very few pedestrians, but every now and then an evening jogger would thump past. Eventually Jemma, who had been leaning heavily into Fitz as they walked, leaned against the stone railing and rubbed her temples.

“Fitz, can I just ask… how long have you… you know.”

“Been in love with you? Ages. Since we were in college but I didn’t know it until you…” He remembered the late night tipsy walk with Jemma where his whole world had collapsed around him. “You probably don’t remember. You said something and I realized I loved you but it was too late, you were leaving.”

“Well, it’s a bit later now.” Jemma said.

“I know.” Fitz said, with more than a little guilt. He sat next to her.

Jemma wanted to say all sorts of things, but she just kept thinking of Will. His proposal had been very sweet. He’d asked her parents for permission and everything, and then one evening at their favorite restaurant (he’d been acting strangely, she thought he might be about to break up with her) a violinist approached the table and, in front of everyone, Will had gone down on one knee. She had been amazed and delighted and said yes right away. He was a good man. She was very lucky.

She looked over at Fitz. He was staring up at the stars in that way that he did, like he was amazed at the vastness of the universe. Even after all their years apart she knew every one of his tics, every line on his face, every one of his insecurities and strengths. She had been so happy when she found out she was going to live near him again. 

“Fitz.” She said, and her old friend looked over at her. That look which had stunned her so much a month ago was back in his eyes, that gentle, tender stare that expressed an overwhelming love. “Oh, Fitz.” She pulled his face towards hers and kissed him deeply.

Fitz very nearly froze and pulled back, but something about the starlight and the water and the fact that the woman he had pined for for almost a decade was suddenly and unexpectedly in his arms shorted out his usual moral compass and Fitz kissed her back just as fervently. More so. 

They both pulled away from one another at the same time. Jemma didn’t have that panicked look in her eyes that she had had the other night. Instead, there was a kind of deep sadness. Fitz cradled her face in his hands, biting his bottom lip.

“I love you too, Fitz.” Jemma said. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do.”

~*~

Later that evening, Fitz sat in his car parked outside Jemma’s house, heart pounding at a rate which frankly should have him hospitalized. 

It had been a big night for him. A lot of fairly momentous things had happened.

They’d spent a few hours together at the park. Jemma, more for her own sake than Fitz’s, verbally laid out a number of options of what she should do, pointing out pros and cons. All of her options ended with her leaving Will. Fitz couldn’t really believe it, and kept gently reminding her that telling him to fuck off and staying with her husband was definitely still an option. Whenever he would do that she’d wave him off, and remind HIM that it was usually bad news to be in love with someone other than one’s husband. Every time she implied that she loved him Fitz would feel a rush of guilty joy and shut up for the next few minutes.

After talking it through with mostly herself, Jemma came to conclusion that the sooner she told Will the better. It was more honest that way, she wouldn’t have to be secretive, which would just make her feel more guilty than she already did. 

“How do you think he’ll take it?” Fitz had asked, as they climbed back into his car and started the drive over to Jemma’s house. 

Jemma looked extremely serious as she thought about it.

“Honestly I have no idea.” She said. 

So here he sat, alone, in a dark empty car on a dark, mostly empty street. Jemma had given him a quick kiss on the cheek and left the car with a determined expression he knew well. She told him she was going to talk to Will, and if it looked like it was going to be a while she would text him, and if he got too upset and she felt like she needed to just run out Fitz would wait for her outside.

Fitz stared raptly at Jemma’s house. The orange glow of the windows looked warm and welcoming and gave no hint of what could be happening inside. Fitz tried not to imagine scenarios in his head, knowing that would only drive him insane. Without a living breathing Jemma in front of him, telling him out loud that she loved him and that she wanted to be with him, he found himself, Orpheus-like, second guessing what he was doing there. 

“If she changes her mind she’ll text.” His whispered to himself out loud. “She won’t just let me sit here.” Like they had left Will in the restaurant? He glanced back up the obstinately cheerful windows and willed Jemma to contact him, to let him know everything was all right. 

About ten minutes later the door opened and shut. Jemma, weighed down and slightly off balance because of a a large stuffed duffel bag slung over her shoulder, lumbered over towards the car.

“Jem!” Fitz opened the door and ran to her in the street. “You all right?” 

Jemma hugged him fiercely. Up close, he could see that she had been crying. Her makeup was smudged all down her face, her cheeks were ruddy and pink, and dark circles puffed under her eyes. 

“Let’s get out of here.” She whispered.

The rest of the drive to Fitz’s apartment he clutched Jemma’s hand, who held on to his so tightly her knuckles were white. Fitz didn’t mind. She could have been an iron clamp on his hand and he’d be happy about it. Every once in a while she would wipe a few tears from her cheeks, but whenever she met Fitz’s gaze she’d give him a smile, and it didn’t look forced. 

“Can I ask how it went?” Fitz asked.

“Not right now. I’ll tell you when I’ve had some time with it.” Jemma said. “He knows what happened, and he wants me out of the house.” 

Fitz nodded, trying to keep his concern out of his face.

“And…” it killed him to say it, “And you’re sure this is what you want? Because if you’re not I understand…”

“Fitz.” Jemma squeezed his hand even tighter. “This is what I want. You are what I want. If it was anybody else in the whole world I’d say no… but.” She looked back over at him with almost a helpless expression. “You’re Fitz.”

Fitz felt himself choking up a bit, stupid, embarrassing, so he didn’t respond. He just kept holding Jemma’s hand and parked his car at his apartment.

~*~

Elena’s aunt had talked her into staying with her all weekend after her party, and Mack had taken the opportunity to shake the (however delightful) company of octogenarian Columbian aunties and return to his apartment. He was a little worried about Fitz. They hadn’t spoken much the past few weeks and judging from the number of times Fitz had walked out of the door of the apartment without his keys, wallet, or other essential item, something was on his mind. 

The apartment, however, was dark and empty when Mack returned to it. He wouldn’t consciously say that he decided to wait up for Fitz, but he pulled up a chair in front of their PS4 with the intention of staying up until Fitz’s return. 

He’d been getting his ass kicked at Dark Souls for longer than he would like to admit when, finally, the key turned in the lock and Mack’s missing roommate made his reappearance, along with a very tearful and ruffled looking Jemma Simmons. 

Mack and Fitz stared at eachother silently for a second. Mack noticed that Jemma and Fitz were holding hands and standing shoulder to shoulder.

“Hi Mack.” Jemma said, sounding like a stressed out Hermione Granger. 

“Hi, Jemma, are you ok?” 

“I’m fine.” Jemma said, not very convincingly.

Fitz found that human speech was too much for him at the moment, but his expression as he stared at Mack spoke volumes. Exhausted, pleading, volumes.

Mack decided that whatever the fuck was happening right then fell into the “not my business” category, and turned his attention back to his video game.

“Good night, y’all.” He said. 

Fitz and Simmons sped past him and the door to Fitz’s bedroom shut emphatically. 

Mack shook his head and shut the game off. He’d done his best. It was out of his hands at this point.

Safe in Fitz’s room Jemma nestled herself into his arms, which, to her surprise, she found were trembling. She pulled back for a moment. 

“Are you all right?” She asked.

“I just…” Fitz leaned his back heavily against the door and sunk down it all the way to the floor. “You’re so wonderful, and you’re my best friend, and you were married, and now… I just went out to get some Indian food and now you’re in my ROOM and it is just a lot.”

Jemma joined Fitz on the floor and smiled at him gently. 

“I understand. A few hours ago when Will and I decided to go out for Indian food I was a married woman and now I’m a separated, unemployed, wild card.”

Fitz looked at Jemma with an expression that could only be described as teary eyed anguish. She hugged him again.

“Jemma” Fitz whispered, pulling back for a moment and making very intense direct eye contact. “If you’re going to wake up tomorrow regretting this… please… I beg you… go back to him.”

Jemma met Fitz’s eye contact without a flinch.

“I love Will.” She said. Fitz’s heart sank. “But.” Jemma said, speaking softly and leaning in closer. “I know my own mind.” She closed her eyes and kissed Fitz’s cheek. “And if I have to lose Will to be with you, Fitz.” She cradled his face in her hands and kissed him gently. “it is worth it.”

With that, Fitz allowed his mind, which had been spazzing out at about a mile a minute, to just shut off. Jemma, his precious Jemma, was right here, and he kissed her like he’d wanted to for years. She was actually surprised for a moment at the passion of it, but the she just allowed herself to be swept along. They kissed one another like like they’d been starved for love. 

Eventually Fitz stood up, helping Jemma up alongside him, and they moved over to the bed. Jemma basically dragged Fitz down with her onto the mattress, and they kissed and pulled at one another’s clothes until eventually, with flushed pink cheeks, Fitz straddled Jemma and pulled her top off over her head. She laughed, sat up and unbuttoned his shirt, kissing his neck as she did so. His breath was heavy and raspy and as soon as she slid the shirt down his shoulders and off he pressed her gently back down into, reaching around to her soft, arching back and trying to undo the clasps of her bra.

Jemma was about halfway to a full, blissed out, mindless state, and as Fitz slid his hand into her pants and started to delicately stimulate her she gasped out loud. She started to feel the muscles tense up in her body, and she leaned into him, moving along with him until they both found the right rhythm and motion and everything came together perfectly and she began to sweat ever so slightly. 

She kissed Fitz deeply and started to undo his belt. He groaned and helped her, undoing his trousers and finally (finally) pressing himself against her, and for a perfect moment they made eye contact, each completely coming to terms with what they were doing. 

With a small whimper Fitz began to move and Jemma groaned, adjusting her hips so that every motion, every thrust felt more an more pleasurable, until she began to lose the ability to even think that clearly. She gave in to the sensation, letting her brain unfocus and center only on pleasure. Her legs trembled. Both of them were completely in sync, moving and thrusting and kissing one another until Jemma completely tensed, gasping, entire body overwhelmed with pleasure, clutching at Fitz’s back as he pulled her even closer. 

She wrapped her knees around him and held him inside her for as long as she could, kissing him with a possessive intensity that Fitz had never seen. She was pulling his hair hard enough that it almost hurt, but in for those few moments in the blissful aftermath of an orgasm he didn’t care, he just held Jemma tighter. Both of them trembled in one another’s arms, neither wanting to let go until morning, maybe not ever. 

~*~

Consensus amongst the astronauts in Will’s program was that Jemma Simmons was a mega-bitch. There really wasn’t a way to explain that she had cheated on him and left him out of the blue that made her look very good. The Space Center community rallied around Will, bringing him casseroles and holding his hand through the divorce proceedings.

Jemma was the pleasantest mega-bitch you’d ever meet. Yes, she felt bad for what had happened, and would be the first to admit that there were better ways to end a marriage. But she felt confident that Will would recover. She let all of Will’s friends and a large part of the U.S. aeronautics team hate her. She could take it.

Fitz stayed with his job at the department of defense just long enough for his and Jemma’s proposal for a new line of research at the University of Houston to get some funding, and then he quit. Mack watched in amazement as Fitz walked away from nearly a decade of work, the kind of dream job that engineers fight over, to work on a new kind of machinery to assist in open-heart surgery. He and Jemma worked together with astonishing professionalism and productivity. Mack couldn’t even comprehend the sorts of things they were working on.

What he could comprehend was the way that Jemma would smile at Fitz when he would bring her a cup of tea, unasked for but desperately needed, right at the perfect moment. He felt like he was meeting a completely new Fitz, a confident, happy Fitz, who dressed well and looked forward to going to work every morning. Daisy, strangely, took total credit for hooking Fitz and Jemma up, seeming to not care that that technically made her a homewrecker. When Mack moved in with Elena and left Fitz and Jemma to their love nest he worried that he should feel more guilty about what happened to Will, but he couldn’t. Sometimes things just don’t work out. Jemma certainly seemed happy. She was already working on making a breakfast nook, and Fitz watched her do it with the quiet amazement of a man who can’t believe his own luck.


End file.
